


Irreparable

by squire



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Hux fixates on fixing, M/M, Reconciliation, Redemption, Well I say redemption but it's Hux, implied MCD, mentions of drinking, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6923029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>General Hux does not fall from grace. </p><p>He leaves it willingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came to me like a healing balm for the hurt [an amazing piece of writing ](http://ocktorok.tumblr.com/post/144596311593/listen-to-a-great-big-world-say-something-and) by ocktorok caused me. Break-up fic? Major character death? No and no, my poor heart had said. And thus this was written. 
> 
> You need to read the ficlet first. It's beautiful, it will hurt you as much as it did me, and my fic will make better sense.

General Hux does not fall from grace.

Instead, the grace seems to ebb away from him slowly, imperceptibly, one favour at a time.

The victory of the First Order is overwhelming and complete. The Galaxy is, finally, at peace. Hux's whole life has revolved around military, he was groomed for war, he lived the war. Now he is the war hero - but the war is in the past, and Hux is a relic of that past. Celebrated, revered, praised - and redundant.

The invites to strategic meetings grow sparse. His actual power diminishes with every trooper deployed, with every starship put on stand-by patrol to keep up the status quo in an universe where's nothing left to conquer. The power structure shifts, the reins overtaken by civilians, by politicians. Hux watches, embittered, how the First Order becomes a playground for spineless brown-noses that emerged from their safe holes as soon as they caught the smell of victory, heady and bright and dripping with blood of those who had fallen for it.

Hux sees how he's been used, how Snoke used him - his fanaticism, his drive, his self-denial for the sake of duty. All that remains for Snoke is to dispose of him, just as he disposed of Kylo Ren. Because Hux understands now, the order to lead the last rally - it was a death sentence. Kylo became too powerful for his master's taste and outlived his usefulness.

Hux doesn't fight it. The cause still stands. All systems have bowed to the First Order; now it's his turn to bow. He retires from active duty, he's handed full honours and a retirement pay and he thinks that the reason he's allowed to do this, to just walk away, is because Snoke no longer sees him as a threat.

Without his... insufferable co-commander and somehow the only true ally he ever had, Hux doesn't feel like a threat.  

Most of the time, he doesn't feel like anyone.

 

*

 

It's one day, indistinguishable from the others - all days are the same now with the bleary mornings, headache meds for lunch, avoiding the scorching daylight of this dusty hole of a town until nightfall and then drinking to oblivion - when Hux finally gets fed up with the wobbly chair in his rented rooms and crashes down on the floor, screwdriver in one hand and the bottle in the other, to do something about it. It takes him an ungodly amount of time just pulling out the old, rust-glued screws from the metal, and then he spends the better part of the afternoon searching the junkyard down the street for a suitable metal rod to replace the broken leg. He could just buy a new chair, or a new part, he could bloody order it done - but his credit balance isn't what it used to be.

The light coming through the lone sand-scratched window in his rooms is long turned blue and then dark when he finally finishes the profile of the new leg to match the old ones, the laser chisel on the makeshift lathe surprisingly steady in his hands that for once don't shake. He sits in the steady chair and stares into the dark, feeling as if he's missing something. He finds the bottle next to the chair, standing forgotten amongst the discarded screws, the booze gone stale. His head is strangely calm, empty in a good way. He throws back his head and laughs, silent gusts of breath that shake him until he hurts. He's ridiculous. It's just a chair leg.    

*

The next day, he finds his neighbour in the communal hallway cursing a jammed lock and offers to fix it. It's a standard military gadget, probably pilfered from one of the decommissioned ships, and Hux is familiar enough with the design and the basic engineering that he can even maintain a polite small talk while he works. It's the first words he's exchanged with his neighbour since he came on this planet.

"Thanks, mister...." the man trails off, awkward. He probably knows how many empty bottles Hux throws out every week but doesn't know his name.

"That's it," Hux nods. Mister is fine. He lives without a ship, without rank, without his –– he can live without a name, too.

"Right, mister," the man nods, uneasily grateful, and then he sniffs. Hux realises, with some surprise, that he probably stinks. What surprises him more is that he still cares if he does.

 *

He asks six portions of rations packs for fixing an old, battered XP-38 landspeeder that's been catching dust in his landlord's backyard. He has to dig out his transceiver, recharge it first, log into the holonet archives and download the blueprints before he can even begin. It takes him a day longer than he thought it would and he gets only three portions. He learns to demand payment in advance.

Eventually, he gets almost good at this. In time, it feels like something that could sustain him into the future.

It's not the future he wishes he could have back to fix it.

 

*

 

Hux pushes his dust goggles higher on his forehead and squints against the glare of purple and venomous red flooding the Empire Casino foyer. He rubs the sand out of his beard - he should get a trim again, soon. A Twi'lekk escort materialises at his side with a sickly sweet welcome drink. Hux has his hand half lifted in refusal when a throaty voice booms through the foyer, slurring the already lazy-tongued Huttese.

"Datsit! Welcome, my dear boy! Drinks on the house for the man who restored the glory of my Empire!"

Hux grabs the drink and downs it faster than he should. The burn spreads downwards and helps to keep down the sick creeping up at the Hutt's choice of words.

"Always a pleasure, Jywwa," he nods to the approaching slug. "How's the business going?"

The day when a drunk Dashade mercenary upended the roulette table in Jywwa's Empire Casino in a fit of spice-addled fury and broke the prized roulette wheel mounted in it came as a breakthrough for Hux. That roulette was a symbol of his casino, generations old heirloom of the family, and Jywwa, like all Hutts, was one ton of pig-headed superstition. During the general upheaval - Jywwa spitting slime everywhere, bouncers kicking the Dashade's head in, gamblers trying to scamper off with their credits - Hux had gathered the broken pieces of the wheel and disappeared. Nobody had seen him for a week.

"Better already with my lucky ginger in the house," Jywwa gurgles and blobs alongside Hux into the casino proper. "Going to try your luck with your favourite?"

Hux's mouth mirrors the smirk on the fat, mushy face of the casino owner. "Sabacc sounds good tonight, don't you think?"

Jywwa pats his shoulder with one of his flabby paws. "As long as you stay away from the roulette table, my boy."

The original wheel was made of Brylark tree, a wood so hard that it resisted even the plasma of his laser cutter, but brittle with age, breaking at every odd strain. He used duraplast to replace the parts that splintered too badly, hours upon hours spent carving the fine patterns on the growth rings, the seams between old and new disappearing under the polishing wax. This wasn't fixing; this was restoring. Hux painted the panels in exactly replicated pigments, baked to imitate the patina of the original, and carefully replaced the set of weights and magnets hidden in the bulk of the wheel - the secret known only to Jywwa, the croupier, and now Hux.

Jywwa offered him a deal: a place at the Sabacc table with the cards flipping in his favour when he needs it, and solid fifty percent share of the winnings. There's always some new smuggler kid or a wide-eyed farm boy from the country, too confident with their credits, too eager to take on the local Sabacc legend, and Hux takes it as a life lesson they need to learn. Since the alternative was a swift but unremarkable death, Hux had no problem accepting the deal. Soon he was able to rent another set of rooms, nicer, ground-level, with a workshop along the street front.

He's never short on credits again. His reputation skyrockets. There's nothing in this town he can't restore.

Save for the one thing in the back room of his shop where no one is allowed; and then _that_ one thing, ever present at the back of Hux's mind. No one is allowed there too.

 

*

 

Hux both hates and likes late evening customers. Hates, because he has to drag himself out of the already slow progress on his project in the back room. Likes, because they never talk much. Their off-hours visits, their covered faces, those pieces of junk they want repaired, that tells their story for them. Hux always takes their cash in advance.

This one waits for him when he's coming home from the casino, the dual pink-blue light of the setting suns withdrawing from the narrow street, slow and tired from heat like everyone else in the town. The stranger carries a VoxBox unit on his sleeve - the cheap, pre-programmed one, judging from the carelessness with which it remains exposed to the dusty wind - and Hux smirks. The man - at least that's the impression his overall shape is giving, more guessed than observed under the many layers of sandy wool wrapped around him - looks Human, or at least Near-Human enough, he should be capable of speaking Basic. Which means he doesn't want his voice to be recognised. The price on his head must be tempting.

"Well?" Hux turns around once they're both in the shop and he assumes his spot behind the counter.  The man takes a minute looking around. He doesn't take off his protective headgear like Hux did. The wide brim of his hat falls deep over his face - Hux can just about catch the glint of the frame of his dust goggles perched above the folds of fabric that protect his nose and mouth. Must be a Chiss, Hux muses idly; he has the height for it and such thoroughness to cover every inch of the skin can only mean that the skin tone would be a dead giveaway.  

Hux clears his throat, showing his impatience. The man tilts his head and then he pulls a little gadget out of the folds of his robes - Hux recognises it as a part of a standard shuttle hyperdrive but he will have to check the blueprints to be sure. For one restoration worth his time there are nine scraps of junk tech that just need a new wiring and Hux would hate it if he could afford to be picky.

The VoxBox wheezes to life and then rattles off one of its pre-programmed phrases: "How much?"

"Buying a new one would cost you less," Hux says, feeling generous after today's gain at the Sabacc table. The man only shakes his head, the edge of his wide hat fluttering like ripples on the water surface. Just as Hux thought: too wanted to even show up on the town's market.

"Thirty credits, fifteen now."

The man lifts both hands, gloved fingers splayed wide. Big hands, thick fingers; something in Hux jolts at the sight, an almost forgotten short-cut from eyes to groin. Wonder if he has dark hair, he muses. The Chiss usually have. Wonder if he would agree to an invitation upstairs.

"Fifteen or you can try Skid's just around the corner. Opens first thing in the morning and would have the new part you–"

Three five-credit chips clink against the countertop, next to the faulty drive part. Hux pockets both and jerks his chin towards the door.

"See you tomorrow, then." He's itching to get in the back room, resenting this odd job already, another delay to the one repair he wants - needs - to finish. He's close, he'd been close for months now. The call of the work has never been stronger. Hux doesn't know what it is about this stranger that makes him straighten his spine, too used to hunch over the worktable by now, why does the air suddenly taste after metal, why has he to keep his hands from running them through his hair, smoothing the loose strands away from his eyes.

The Chiss renegade stares at him for a moment longer, goggles and hat and shawl and no expression at all, and then he nods and turns to leave.

   

 


	2. II

Hux has his hand on the door handle to the back room, his mind already pondering the new diatium cell he'd seen at Skid's this morning and if the old scoundrel could be persuaded to flog it to him for a few–

There's a surprised grunt at the door, a flapping sound of bare feet on sun-cracked tiles, and another customer pushes her way into the shop, nearly colliding with the leaving Chiss, unheeding.

Hux sighs. This evening just keeps dragging on. "What can I do for you, Zuuka?"

Zuuka is a Togruta, tiny five foot something, clean gnawed bone of a woman. Meat is hard to come by in this town. Sometimes Hux wonders what she'd done to end up here, away from her tribe, abandoned by her pack. She runs an uptown cantina, the need for companionship showing in her choice of job, and the only soft thing about her is her toddler son, currently perched on her hip,his montrals still nothing more than a pair of bumps on his red head.

She lets him go on the floor and hands Hux a small, nearly translucent sphere containing something white and amorphous. A huge crack runs around it, spidering across the surface.

Hux turns it in his hands. It's a lumisphere, sealed container of translucent gel crystals that can accumulate daylight and emit a soft glow for long hours afterwards. A handy thing in a night lamp, especially in this town where the generators are turned off at the curfew. But the gel has to be kept submerged in liquid; once exposed to the air, it solidifies, turning opaque and losing all luminescent properties.

The sad white lump of substance inside the sphere is dry, and obviously has been for some time.

He hears Zuuka's muttering, words  "broke this morning" and "he won't go to sleep" registering as if from a distance. He decides he hates late evening customers after all.

"You'll have to buy a new one," he puts the unfortunate lamp back on the counter. "The gel has already polymerised, it's an irreversible reaction."

The boy on the floor babbles, his toddler Basic just as incomprehensible to Hux as the Togruti, but the plaintive, tearful tone is clear enough. Hux suppresses a squirm. The child's eyes are large, amber in colour, they remind him of something he should've never forgotten and yet he did. Hux's head feels sluggish and jittery at once, his usual equilibrium upset. He always had little tolerance for children.

"Couldn't you - I don't know, replace the crystals?" Zuuka looks far more anxious that a simple night lamp would warrant. "My son has night terrors, it's his fairy charm, it helps him sleep..."

"I don't have new ones. You can try the trade outpost on the second moon, anything that comes submerged in water will be terribly overpriced around here," Hux informs her dryly. He just wants her and the snotty brat out of here, electricity is rationed in this part of the town and he's wasting valuable time–

"They say you can fix anything," Zuuka doesn't back down. The child picks up on her mood and starts crying, an ugly, whiny sound. Hux doesn't know what to do when faced with such raw, unrestrained emotion. The jab at his reputation stings. He _can_ fix anything. Anything save for one thing - but this woman doesn't need to know that.

"I can't fix people's stupidity," he hisses. "You said it got cracked this morning - if you had brought it to me right away, the gel wouldn't be dried up like sand now and I could've saved it."

Zuuka's head-tails tremble with offence. "I was busy! I am a working woman – I didn't have time until now!"

Hux is just about done with people's idiocy. It offends him on a level that nobody should be able to reach, it surprises him how much the woman's mistake grates at him. She _knew_ the thing was important to her son and yet she didn't make time.

"Perhaps it's time your son grew up," he suggests, tone clipped and dismissive. Zuuka's eyes narrow. Her sharp canines glint in the dimming light from the street.

"What do you know about having to chase every scrap - about working from dawn to midnight every day - you, nothing but a pet of the Hutts, lazy casino crook–"

Hux looms over her in two fast strides, yelling in her face before he realises what he's doing.

"Do you think I know nothing about being _busy_? Do you think I didn't once work so hard that I could no longer remember the exact colour of my lover's eyes–"

There's a sharp gasp, a muffled sound of distress at the door and Hux realises the child hasn't been crying for some time now. As one, both he and the mother turn their heads. The Chiss - Hux had forgotten all about him and Zuuka never even bothered to acknowledge him - has not left as they thought. He has the toddler in his arms and is whispering something, face pressed into the montrals, the soothing murmur muffled by his shawl. The boy is no longer crying, he's snuggling against the stranger with absolute trust, wide amber eyes fixed on Hux and he cannot tear his gaze from them, not now when he realised who they remind him of.

For a dead man, Kylo Ren is very present in Hux's life tonight.

For an indeterminable, reeling moment Hux feels the waves of pure, childishly unguarded emotions coming off the young Togruta, so snug in the Chiss' arms - loss, sadness, regret, missing - and he wonders, between one blink and another, if the child is Force-sensitive, the Togruta are known to have great affinity for it - and then it's gone. The assault on his mind ceases as abruptly as it began, leaving behind a strange, soothing sensation. It almost feels like an apology.

"I am sorry we scared you, little one." The words appear on the tip on his tongue unbidden, as if they aren't entirely his own.

"I am sorry too, Datsit," Zuuka sighs, defeated. "It's been a hell of a long day."

Hux watches the Chiss put the child down, open the door, disappear into the gathering dusk. The fight leaves him, all energy drained from him and trickling down the street, following the quickly wind-smoothed footprints of the stranger on the dusty pavement. He wants to go after him, wants to ask him to stay the night.  

The back room waits.

"I can give you some candles," he hears himself offering.

Zuuka grins without humour. "Children and fire. No thanks."

She takes her son by the hand and they leave, hurrying to make it home before the curfew. Hux feels for the Chiss' broken gadget in his pocket. First things first.

*

He has to switch on his precious battery table lamp when he finally makes it to the worktable in the back room. Carefully arranged over the hand-drawn schematics there lie the gleaming, meticulously cleaned parts of a lightsaber.

It's been the last favour he'd asked from the officers back at the time when he was still owed favours. To bring him everything that could have been salvaged from the site of the explosion that had claimed Ren's life, along with the lives of dozens of rebels. It was rather poetic, in a sick and entirely Ren way, that the man who collected the ashes of his enemies had in the end mixed theirs with his own.

Ren's helmet was in smithereens and Hux had melted the hateful thing into a ball and flushed it out of the airlock. He regretted it the next morning when he sobered up but what was done was done.  

He's not sure why he had kept the broken pieces of the lightsaber. He had despised it in its time, now when it's too late he clings to it. For a long time, he didn't even want to touch it. It was broken, like its once owner. It was useless, like Hux now.

The hardest thing to begin with was deciding what was too damaged by the explosion and what was in such a horrible shape simply by Ren's crazy design. There were no blueprints, no instructions to go by in the public archives, and Hux didn't dare to overplay his diminishing authority. He wasn't even sure if he had all the parts he needed.

The first time he activated the haphazardly assembled lightsaber the power grid backfired, spectacularly, and luckily the whole blade shorted out before it could explode in Hux's face. How ironic, to go down in the same way he'd always predicted for Ren.

Try as he might, he couldn't keep the blade stable. He was sure he was on the right track, evening out the cycling field, refining all the focusing crystals, _improving_ instead of restoring - and yet, the plasma discharge never lasted more than a few seconds, sometimes flickering out with a pitiful hiss, sometimes backfiring and frying up all the wiring.

Perhaps there was a grain of truth to the legend that you couldn't assembly a lightsaber without the Force.

Hux scoffs at his own doubts. The mysticism around kyber crystals aside, the lightsaber is a piece of technology. An extremely ancient and faulty one to boot, but still just a technology. And Hux could fix anything.

Sometimes when he lies on his bed, willing the morning to dawn faster, he can admit to himself that he's glad it's taking so long. He honestly doesn't know what will he do once the lightsaber will be fixed, and still there'll be no way to bring back Ren.

*

The Chiss renegade doesn't show up the next evening. Pity, Hux thinks. Some bounty hunter must have got lucky. The repaired primer is in good enough shape to be sold on the market or Hux can keep it for parts, and he gets to keep the fifteen credits too, so he doesn't pay it much mind.

*

The next evening he comes home to find a paper-wrapped parcel on his counter, inside of the locked shop. There's no note, and nothing is missing. Not even from the back room, and Hux has a near heart-attack before he remembers there's an entry log on the electronic lock to the back room, and when he checks, there are no other records of entry than his own.

The dunnage material protecting the box inside the parcel from sudden impact shocks is stamped with the mark of a delivery company based on the second moon. Inside Hux finds a plastic bag full of water and floating, glittering, faintly glowing gel crystals.

It seems that Zuuka has some well-off friends. Hux retrieves the cracked glass sphere from the trash bin, cleans it from the dried lumps of polymer, pours the new crystals in, expels all the air bubbles and seals the cracks. The finished lumisphere is beautiful, he can see why the boy was so attached to it.

Zuuka stares at the glowing bundle, the luminescence strong enough to break through the rag Hux had wrapped it in for the short walk, the shine growing stronger as the suns set.

"I take it these weren't sent by you," Hux remarks after a minute of shocked silence. He's afraid Zuuka will actually start crying. She looks a lot like her son right now, when she isn't fighting off drunkards and counting the tips with resigned hunger in her eyes.

"I... I can't pay you for them," she remembers herself. It's painful to watch.

"I didn't pay for them either," Hux shrugs. "One of your patrons must be fond of you." That, or it was the Chiss, but Hux can't fathom why a wanted person that can't even afford to speak with their own voice would waste credits on a random act of kindness towards someone they'd never met before.  

"It's getting dark," she jolts to life. "I better..."

"Go and put him to sleep," Hux finishes for her and turns to go. It is getting dark and he doesn't want to drain the batteries in his workshop again.

"Datsit?" She's stopped half-way through the door, uncertain, pressed for time. Then she blurts out:

"I believe you'll get your second chance, too."

Hux gives her back her grin from two nights ago, sharp as glass and without any warmth. He thinks of all the nights he wanted to tell Ren to come back, just after the next cycle, or the next, or the one after that.

"I've had one," he says. "And a third, and a fourth, and stars know how many after that. I wasted them all."

He doesn't wait for her confusion, or her ridicule, or for the worst – her pity. He hurries back to his shop. The incident with the locked door scared him, and he can't lose his project now, not when he's so close–

When he locks the shop door after himself and switches on the lights, he knows something is off even before his eyes adjust to the brightness. The stranger from two days ago is leaning against the countertop, hat, goggles, shawl and everything, waiting.

The door to the back room is gaping open and Hux's blood runs cold. His fingers close around the pocket taser he carries with him at all times. He thinks, fleetingly, if the bounty on the man would hold even if he's delivered dead.

"What," he begins, flatly, and then stops himself when the hat comes off first, revealing dark brown hair. Not a Chiss then, and then the goggles are pulled off and Hux's breath shortens for a reason he doesn't have time to analyse because the shawl comes off next and–

"She wasn't wrong," the apparition, the imposter, the _real and alive_ Kylo Ren says, voice as deep as ever and his face still so youthful despite the new scars, and then he adds, "I'd appreciate if you didn't electrocute me," and the entire shop shifts sideways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing grows under my hands. Stay tuned for the Coda (to find out if Hux won't electrocute Ren after all :))


	3. Coda

The taser thrums in his fingers, white-knuckled and flexed to the point of pain. His hand is not shaking, it's not, it's _not_ , and yet the taser wriggles–

"I did fix the lumisphere," Hux says, his voice hollow to his own ears, and he repeats, insisting, his breath growing too short and frantic, "I _did_ , I fixed it," because if he did, then the unsigned parcel on his counter was real, and the meeting two days prior did happen, and this all is not just another hallucination brought on by booze and Hux is not about to wake, _again_ , in a puddle of his own sick or with his head hanging over the edge of the bed of some stranger with hair almost dark enough and shoulders almost broad enough for the booze to make them _be enough_...

"I'm real, Hux," Kylo says, quickly, wincing at the thoughts that Hux must be broadcasting all over the place now and Hux doesn't care for embarrassment, he values his sanity more.

"You were real enough the first two times, too," he laughs, still the same soundless huff, everything that he's been able to express since he came here to drink himself into decay, only to change his mind.

Hux is shaking, his whole body feeling like falling and yet he hasn't moved. He closes his eyes, breathes in - metal, smell of metal in the air, dry with forced circulation, chill spreading under the too thin fabric of the uniform, and this is _Ren_ projecting, Ren trying to soothe him, and Hux opens his eyes to see the wide open door to the back room and the planet-cultivated anxiety hits him like a freighter.

"You can't be back," he says, _stupid_ , playing for time, trying to shift his feet towards the back room, _why can't he move_ , "I'm not finished yet, I have to fix it first."

"Hux," Ren sighs, something low and distressed breaking into his voice. He's moving to block Hux's way, to take his project away from him, his work, unfinished, his work, his _life_ –

"I can fix it," Hux insists, pleads, voice high. "I _can_ , I can fix anything."

"Some things can't be fixed."

He's not talking about the lightsaber, Hux knows that, deep inside he knows that the lightsaber is nothing but a metaphor - but the back room is just there. So close. The only safe place, the single focal point in the dispersed mess Hux's life has become. Now it's open, violated, _seen_ \- and Hux hates it, why had Ren to come here when there's nothing he wants from Hux, when he doesn't bring anything he wants to _restore_ , why has he come just to see him so broken?

"It's not - you're not broken, Hux. Neither am I. You don't need to fix _us_."

Ren moves closer, hand lifted as if he wants to placate him, calm him down, and Hux wants to taser him, wants to rip off that desert gear and sink his nails into flesh and tear Ren apart. His mouth waters. He doesn't know if it's bloodlust, or Ren's proximity, or both.

Kylo's mouth does a strange thing, and it takes Hux's short-circuited mind several seconds to realise that he's attempting a smile. The corners of his mouth fight a losing battle against the scars on his cheeks, both the old, pinkish slash left by the scavenger's lightsaber and a new one, silvery and spreading, a burn mark. He didn't have the helmet on when he died, Hux thinks, and then corrects the absurd statement, he didn't have the helmet on when he _faked his death_ , and like that, he snaps back into his own body and realises he cannot move, held in place by the gesture of Ren's outstretched hand, preventing him from toppling over in case he faints. Or in case he attacks.

"Let go of me," he snarls. Tightens his hold on the taser - he's _not_ going to let Ren disarm him, Force or not.

"There's the General I knew," Ren mutters and Hux bristles at the title, anger infused with shame and above it all the _betrayal_ , hot and humiliating and eating him from inside like a parasite.

Ren is right in front of him, still holding him taut, just one kick, one bite away. Pries the taser out of Hux's hand, the touch so shocking that Hux's fingers give up the fight. Ren is watching him, calm, curious, and then Hux feels the Force restraints slipping away from his body and he's free.

"Let it out," Ren orders, and Hux's blood boils over.

He's still not sure he's not throwing himself at a thin air but Ren is there, Kylo is there, dust-smeared robes and big arms enveloping him and pressing his face against a broad, solid, _real_ chest and Hux screams and fights and trashes and in the end, they end up on the floor, curled around each other, neither willing to let go.

"They told me there was an explosion," Hux says into the wool when he can trust his voice again.

Kylo's voice rumbles beneath his mouth and the layers of fabric, above him, all around him. "I've sensed Snoke's plan to kill me."

"Let me guess. The Force told you?"

"Yes."

Hux huffs his silent laugh again. He always thought that Snoke was afraid of the true extent of Kylo's powers. Seems he was right to do so.

"They told me you had died. Beyond reasonable doubt."

"I had left behind enough of me to make it believable," Kylo lifts his right hand and tugs off the glove. Beneath it, the dark-grey metal of a prosthetic gleams dully in the overhead light of Hux's shop. There's a low, broken sound, and Hux realizes it's come from him.

"It was a price for getting away from Snoke that I was willing to pay," Kylo says, still so fierce. Still so determined. Now even more so, when Hux has lost his own goals to blind him, and Kylo seems to have outgrown his self-doubt.

"How does he not know that you're still alive?"

_Why couldn't I know it?_

"My Knights... helped. Creating a projection, a shield of sorts..." Kylo waves his hand around his head in a vague gesture. Oh. So the Knights weren't loyal to the First Order the way Kylo was. Interesting.

"As for you..." and of course Kylo has heard that treacherous thought.

The fallen Knight buries his face in the hair on top of Hux's head and doesn't speak for a long while. "I like your hair," he mutters, eventually, "and your beard. It's.. different."

"Flattery won't help you," Hux huffs again and makes to push him away, for show. His own hands betray him, still clinging to the material of Ren's robes.

"What shall I say? That I could sense your disappointment that day Snoke had sent me to finish the Resistance? That I already knew I was meant to die there and couldn't give it away? That even if you'd have wanted to help me–" and Hux's chest tightens at the _if_ – "you'd have only signed your own death warrant?" Kylo sounds helpless. "Without me, you were safe."

_Without you, I was insignificant. Nobody._

"That, yes, but Hux, only the fact that Snoke deemed you insignificant has kept you alive."

Kylo sounds frightfully honest and Hux knows he's right. "Damn you and your mind-tricks, Ren."

"You can hit me," Kylo offers, lips pursed in that odd half-smile again, and Hux kisses him instead. Hard and punishing, he bites into that mouth, drinks in the taste he'd missed so much, pushes Kylo backwards onto the floor and crawls over him, pinning him down with every bit of strength he has left.

The overhead light goes off with a guilty _plonk_ and the shop drowns in darkness. Of course. The curfew.

Beneath him, Kylo is still warm, the dust-crusted layers not giving up the accumulated heat so easily, breathing, alive, real. Hux slips his hand under the topmost layer to find his belt. He wants, now, here on the floor and in the pitch black darkness, in the improbable case he wakes up and–

"Huh," he grunts when his fingers brush over something metallic, slender, familiar and not at once.

"I had to build a new one," Ren says, defensively, as he unclasps the new lightsaber from his belt. Hux feels curiously around the design. No crossguards this time. Kylo must have found a better crystal. Hux wonders what the colour is, now.

"Pale yellow. Almost white."

"Does that mean anything?"

Kylo shrugs, the movement jostling Hux's head resting now on his chest.

"It means that I will kill Snoke. After that, who knows."

"So that's what you're doing now? Embracing the Light?" Hux can't keep the resentment out of his voice, doesn't want to.

"Embracing my destiny," Kylo corrects him, unfazed. "And it's what _we_ are doing, now."

Hux shakes his head. The movement nuzzles his face into the rough wool. The smell isn't too bad.

"And then what? The return of the prodigal son? Do you realise that there's no place for me on that shiny new side you've chosen? Do you think they would forget Hosnia? D'Qar? Dantooine? There's no redemption, Ren. Not for me."

"I do not wish to go _back_ ," Kylo says, infuriatingly quiet in the face of Hux's seething sarcasm. "The Resistance is gone, entirely. The Republic is dead. But you must see, Hux, that the First Order has failed, too. It's not what we fought for. It'll never be, not with Snoke on top."

And Hux knows that, he's lived on this insignificant planet long enough to see that the promised changes have not come. Criminals like the Hutts are still at the wheel. Poor people like Zuuka are still without prospects for a better life.

Kylo lifts his head and seeks Hux's mouth for another kiss, and then he pushes himself up on the elbow and flips them, effortlessly, the metal knuckles of his bare hand clinking against the tiled floor as he protects the back of Hux's head. Attuned to the dark a bit, Hux can just about make out the glint of Ren's eyes, looming over his face, hungry like black holes.

"There are people missing you in command," he says, devouring Hux's face with his eyes, with his mouth, sucking him inside his mind. "People loyal to your family, to your ideals. The Knights will follow me. The board is set, Hux. It's time we restored you."

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I wrote a literal fix-it fic. 
> 
> And this fic has fanart!! Incredibly amazing people made fanart for this and I am so blessed to exist in the same universe as this wonderful fandom. 
> 
> The [Chiss Renegade](http://sinningsquire.tumblr.com/post/144789735891/sillysyra-ive-been-watching-too-many-westerns)
> 
> and [Ren's disguise ](http://sinningsquire.tumblr.com/post/144791460911/luftmenschhh-this-isnt-something-that-i)
> 
> You can join me in Kylux hell on my [Tumblr:)](http://sinningsquire.tumblr.com/)


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